How Does a Corporation Handle a Strike Internally? A Firsthand Account

In 2007, I was working for AT&T as a retail sales consultant. Later that year I applied for, and got, a much needed promotion to corporate business manager. I wanted out of retail. The money was good, but after five years I was burnt out. The promotion from retail to corporate gave me a chance at a career instead of a job. I was now working in the main corporate offices of AT&T on the same floor as the highest executives in Southern California. I had access to power in the organization previously unavailable to me. Like a newborn, I was open, curious, and peeing myself with excitement at the potential of it all. I also wore diapers, but that’s a personal comfort issue, and let’s just forget I wrote that.

“I knew AT&T was far from perfect, but I didn’t know they could be so merciless.”

Three months in to my new job, news came out AT&T was facing a “possible” strike of its unionized forces throughout the country. A week later, more details trickled in. Most of the contracts with the union were coming up for renewal in a few months. The company was working on contingency plans in the event of a possible strike. The union had thousands of members across the country, so a strike would impact the organization immensely.

In 2007, AT&T was a fairly new conglomerate. Southwestern Bell Corporation or SBC as they’re more commonly known, bought out several companies including AT&T, and took on the AT&T name for branding reasons. Because they ate up multiple companies, there were five to seven different contracts that had to be agreed upon in order to avert a strike. I wasn’t feeling confident about an agreement.

Nonunion employees were told to stand by, and an “in case of strike, break glass” blueprint would be forthcoming from the powers that be. A week later, employees in the corporate offices received an urgent memo. All workers classified as noncritical would be assigned temporary replacement jobs. Each employee’s specific assignment was announced via another memo a few weeks later. That second memo contained reassignment details for all internal personnel. There was a lot of chatter in the offices on what this all meant. Some was hearsay, and some was gossip. In between were facts.

After researching the memo and speaking with my direct manager, this is what I discovered: AT&T corporate included accountants, engineers, inside sales, business managers, and many others as “non critical employees” who would replace union workers if they strike. The only people who were safe from reassignment were those in the highest levels of executive power, because of course they were. Every reassigned person would attend a one week training session on their potential new job. A job that had no correlation to their competencies or current titles.

What struck me about the memo were the huge number of employees being sent far away from their home offices. I got relatively lucky. My temporary job would be 90 minutes from where I lived. Others were being sent from Tennessee to California or New York to Arizona or places that were nowhere near their homes. Why? No clue. AT&T never mentioned why in the memos. Big companies don’t like the question “why” from employees. It offends their Victorian sensibilities.

My job reassignment was as a data entry clerk at a Pacific Bell office. I’d be entering information on new local landline business. (Remember landlines? I know, how quaint). The training class was in Anaheim, California and had about 15 people. Most of the attendees were from different parts of the country, but had one thing in common: they were all super pissed about being there. Good times.

Pacific Bell used archaic computer programs. They were over 20 years old and so confusing our trainer gave up trying to teach us a few days in. She told us to simply hope the strike would be averted. According to her, the best case scenario was there would be at least one trained professional on the systems where we were going to work. Then we could go to that person if we had questions on this 20 year old system. Great. I couldn’t be happier how all this was turning out.

On our last day of class the trainer told us what to expect if there was a strike. She’d worked for SBC for years and had gone through a couple of them. First the good news…..O.K. that’s it for the good news. Now the bad news. If there was a strike, all employees would be working six days a week, twelve hours a day. This would go on indefinitely until the strike was settled. Additionally, any vacation time that had been approved would now be unapproved, and any future vacation time would be denied. Breathe that in. You smell that? Why that’s the smell of a corporation’s contempt for all of its employees. It smells like your face being rubbed in a dog’s business end. Ahhhh, yes, yes, exquisite.

The worst part of the whole mess was this: as non union employees most of us were exempt from overtime. That meant we were straight salary. No overtime… No extra pay…. Nothing…..Just “do what you’re told and get to work” That work was something we had no affinity for that we could be doing for mind bendingly long days and hours, week after week after week, with no specific end in sight. Take a minute to pause and imagine yourself in that scenario. Chilling, isn’t it?

I knew AT&T was far from perfect, but I didn’t know they could be so merciless. Sending employees away from their homes for an indefinite period of time is crazy. Most people have spouses, kids, partners, pets, lives. How were they supposed to just leave it all behind not knowing when they would go back? I had doubts my trainer was 100 percent right or at least I was hoping she wasn’t.

When I got back from training I went to my direct manager who I knew to be a decent, honest person and asked her if the trainer’s disturbing story was true. She told me it was true and every bit as awful as we were told. Have I used the word fuck yet in this essay? No? O.K. good. I decided to keep this post curse free.

So there was nothing I could do about the situation if a strike occurred, except quitting, which wasn’t an option since I had a beefy mortgage. (Is there any other kind?) This left me with anxiety, sleepless nights, and stress as my everyday buddy. We hung out quite a bit he and I. Friends to the very end.

Fortunately, three weeks after my training, the strike was averted. The union had agreed to the terms set forth by AT&T. It was a huge relief for me and everyone in the company. It also taught me an important lesson. You’re screwed whether you’re in or out of the corporation proper. The highest levels of management, where big executive decisions are made that affect their employees, do not give a shit …about you… about me….about anybody. What they do care about is maximizing profits any way they can and maintaining an illusion to the public that it’s business as usual no matter what. Even in the event of a nationwide labor walkout, there’s no reason for concern. “Hey folks, ignore the picketers on the street, chanting, and the workers inside tearing their hair out. Nothing to see here. It’s all good!”

I still think about that period of my work past from time to time. I could have been in a nightmare living situation had that strike gone forward. I don’t know how I’d have handled six days a week, twelve hours a day work weeks. Work weeks that could go have gone on for months. All I know is I considered myself incredibly lucky, and was overjoyed to simply do the job I was recently promoted to. A job I was still learning. A job I enjoyed. A job I was laid off of one month later.